Rosewood "concept" guitar
This commission during the early eighties allowed me free rein to experiment with ideas I
had at the time about assymetrical bridges and bracings. It was a German spruce/ Brazilian
Rosewood instrument with a very deep, sharp cutaway modelled after the Les Paul template.
Notice the unique fingerboard treatment: the end of the fingerboard flares towards an
abalone- encircled D-shaped soundhole. Whenever I can, I like to integrate the
fingerboard/ rosette/ soundhole visually, and this is one solution that I thought was
quite succesful.Notice the two pearl-dots just behind the heel inside the cutaway. These
"cufflinks" were meant to be removed for access to the tapered pins that secured
the neck to the body. I now use a simpler, hardware-based attachment method than this
complex system.

Integrated
maple 6-string
I had the good fortune to secure a large, paper-white plank of soft Norwegian maple with a
persistent and extraordinary curl figure. I thus was able to saw the neck, back, sides and
bindings from the same plank, unifying all the visual elements of the instrument. The
result was an wonderfully integrated look: the guitar looked like it just grew that way!
This is one of the aesthetic advantages of the one-luthier-one- instrument concept
which is difficult to match in a factory setting. The "grand concert" (similar
to a Martin 00)-sized 6-string was made for the wonderfully talented song-writer Julia
Burroughs who uses it both on stage and at home when she creates her songs.

I love cutaways.
Cutaways demand a lot of focused problem solving due to the concurrent woodworking,
acoustic and aesthetic challenges that they present to the maker.

The practical consequence of inserting a cutaway into an otherwise standard-
shaped guitar is that you end up with a smaller soundbox: one with reduced air volume. The
soundbox air capacity in part supports the power and resonance of the bass fundamentals
produced by the guitar, so if the maker doesn't compensate (by deepening the sides,
widening the template, adjusting the soundhole size, etc.) the finished instrument can end
up deficient or reticent in its bass output.

.

Above is a cutaway closeup of a maple 12-string
(also seen from another angle immediately below). Notice the fancy rosewood piping carried
through as a unifying motif throughout the whole guitar. This, in combination with the
fact that the neck, back and sides were sawn from the same plank of Norwegian fiddleback
maple, imparts a sense of integrity to the guitar's design.....

and, to the right of it, a top closeup of a brilliant, blood-red African
Padouk cutaway 12-string made for noted jazz guitarist John Abercrombie.

Another
view of the integrated, all curly maple twelve string cutaway guitar described above left.
Note the rosewood trim continues throughout the full length of the back and neck (and
headstock, too), and encircles all the soundbox plates. It took a lot of preplanning to
put this all together!